Work Through Time: Cape Breton Stories of Land & Sea

William (Billy) G. Budge was born in 1948 in the small fishing village of Neil’s Harbour on the northern tip of Cape Breton. In 1955 his father accepted the position of lighthouse keeper on St. Paul Island, a rugged and forlorn mountain in the sea. Positioned at the entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence between Cape Breton and Newfoundland, this island is subject to violent gales, snowstorms and is often shrouded in fog. Early seafarers called it the “Graveyard of the Gulf” due to the vast numbers of ships and countless lives that were lost along its shores. When Billy moved to St. Paul Island with his parents and younger sister, they lived at the southwest light station in almost total isolation. His family quickly learned to cope in a world without neighbours, electricity, schools, or mainland comforts.

Bill Budge and his sister sit by their new home on St. Paul Island.
William G. Budge.

Since his return from World War II in March 1946, my father had not had steady employment. Continuous work was almost impossible to find. Over the past nine years, Dad had tried his hand at various jobs, none of which was permanent or without hardships. He longed for a job with a future and was determined to settle for nothing less. Dad remembered coming home from the war, taking that first job fishing with his uncle in a small boat. Fish catches were down that year. Money was scarce for fishermen, even more so for a fisherman’s helper. When things proved no better the following year, something had to change.

My father pursued several other kinds of fishing over the next five years. The hook-and-line cod fishery offered the best earning potential. It could last from early spring until Christmas, when severe cold and drift ice from the Gulf of St. Lawrence forced the fishermen to haul their boats ashore and quit for the season. But cod fishing too had its pitfalls. Frequently, there were no fish buyers in the immediate area. My father’s catches had to be transported a long distance up the coast just to be sold. This proved costly for the fisherman. My father often wondered if the effort to continue was worthwhile. Fishing is a dangerous life as well: storms spring up without warning, and my mother worried about my father, still out on the water. It seemed that fishing offered only hardships to those determined to remain at it. Eventually, after careful consideration, and seeing nothing in the immediate future that looked even remotely bright in earning a living from the sea, my father decided to quit fishing.

In the spring of 1955, while working part time as a bartender at the Neil’s Harbour Royal Canadian Legion, he noticed a job posting on the bulletin board for a lighthouse keeper. It stated that a preference would be given to war veterans. Immediately, he applied. Less than a month later, he was holding the affirmative response in his hand. Smiling to his friend he said, “Yes, Jim, I’m going to be the lighthouse keeper at the Southwest light station on St. Paul Island!”

Aerial view of St. Paul Island.
William G. Budge.

St. Paul Island, less than two square miles in area, rises out of the sea about thirteen miles northeast of Cape North, and is the northernmost part of Nova Scotia. The island is barely three miles long and about one mile across at its widest point. It’s situated in the Cabot Strait, that body of water which separates Cape Breton and Newfoundland. The Cabot Strait deals harshly with this small piece of land that dares to sit within its grasp. Strong currents sweep the island with the changing tides of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. During the winter months, a region of the Gulf east of the St. Lawrence freezes, forming heavy ice ten to twenty feet thick. Wind and sea break off portions of this ice mass, which float away as huge pans. This process of freezing and breaking away eventually fills the whole Gulf of St. Lawrence with “drift ice.” Although individual pans of ice can cover several square miles, they must not be confused with icebergs, which are broken off sections of a glacier. Strong tides and the prevailing winds of the Gulf and the Cabot Strait move this large body of drift ice toward the open Atlantic. Around mid-January, the first ice floes reach St. Paul Island. They scrape and grind past the granite cliffs, thundering by like a never-ending train. If cold temperatures persist throughout the winter, it could be late May before the last sheet floats past.

One of three St. Paul lighthouses.
William G. Budge.

The island is covered with thick, stunted spruce forest, with a few small grassy areas near the shore. Some hardwood trees grow among the evergreens, but most die before they become very large. Most of the island’s plants, high atop cliffs of solid granite, are protected from the direct force of the sea. Yet St. Paul Island offers little protection for the weary sailor seeking shelter from a passing storm. Ocean swells roll over jagged reefs; waves curl and crash against a solid coast of vertical cliffs and deep crevasses. There are a few pebble beaches, but no sand anywhere. There is no protected harbour where a boat could anchor and wait for the weather to improve. There are two or three small coves that offer some shelter from certain winds, but the island’s northeast-southwest orientation means there is no shelter from a nor-easter. Winter gales often last for several days, or even for a week.

Prior to 1832, St. Paul Island was uninhabited. There was no human assistance or structures where survivors [of shipwrecks] could seek shelter. There is no record of how many lives were lost due to drowning, freezing or starving to death on the island.

A young Billy Budge returns from hunting.
William G. Budge.

In 1838, the British government dispatched Samuel Cunard (founder of Cunard Steamship Lines) to St. Paul Island to find a suitable site to erect a lighthouse. On this assignment Mr. Cunard was accompanied by John Campbell. Campbell was already a resident in Nova Scotia, having emigrated from Scotland with his family. These men decided that two lighthouses should be built on the island, one at the northeast end and another at the southwest. The following year John Campbell was appointed Governor of St. Paul Island, with the responsibility of supervising the construction of the lighthouses and overseeing the operation of the two lifesaving stations. It took more than a year to complete construction. Shortly before Christmas 1840, both lighthouses were in operation.

The lighthouse on the northeastern end of St. Paul Island is not located on the main island. It is situated on a smaller island composed of a few acres of grass and rock. It is separated from the main island by a narrow channel about a hundred feet wide known as a “tittle.”

The lighthouse near their island home.
William G. Budge.

Even though the two lighthouses were only three miles apart, the lightkeepers seldom visited on another. The island’s dense growth of stunted trees, steep slopes, jagged rocks, and, in the winter, the ice and snow, made travel difficult. A few times during the summer when the weather permitted, the lightkeepers visited each other by boat.

Conditions at the Southwest lighthouse, our destination, were entirely different from those at the Northeast lighthouse. There was no electricity for our house and no generators to operate the light. My father would not have any assistant keepers because our station did not have a radio beacon or foghorn that required extra crew for its management. Although it was a one-man operation, activating the light was a fairly complex procedure. An even more demanding task was seeing that it remained functional through the night. However, our greatest challenge as a family would be learning to live together without friend and neighbours.

The lamp used in one of the lighthouses on the island.
William G. Budge.

Activating the light in the lighthouse was a complicated procedure. First, it was necessary to carry containers of kerosene up the ladder and then pour the fuel into a tank. Another tank had to be manually pumped up with air to a specified pressure. Weights had to be winched up, mantels replaced, generator tubes cleaned, and all the lenses and prisms polished. Sometimes, it would take almost an hour just to light the light. Then it required a constant watch throughout the night to ensure that it remained operational. I watched with interest as Dad completed the various steps of preparation. Finally, with the strike of a match, the light was lit and burning brightly. We then left for the house, where my father made his first entry into the station log book: “12 September, 1955; Time of lighting: 1820 DST; Weather: Sunny.”

These selections originally appear in Billy Budge’s book, Memoirs of a Lightkeeper’s Son: Life on St. Paul Island, published in 2003 by Pottersfield Press.

© 2003 William G. Budge.

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